Roger Ailes withdraws $500k Putnam gift after outcry

A day after Tax Watch revealed the details of Roger Ailes $500k donation, the county Legislature didn't vote on the agreement, and Ailes withdrew his gift

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Roger and Beth Ailes, at the July 2015 groundbreaking for the Roger Ailes Senior Center, withdrew their $500,000 donation a day after Tax Watch questioned their control over the public project.(Photo: David McKay Wilson/The Journal News)Buy Photo

The Roger Ailes Senior Center in Cold Spring is dead, buried by the former Fox News CEO’s insistence that in exchange for his $500,000 donation, he run the $1.5 million public works project and have no responsibility for work performed by his no-bid contractors.

It was a secret deal promoted by the administration of Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell, who looked to Ailes and his wife, Elizabeth, to burnish her image among seniors in the county’s Democratic stronghold. It would also bolster the prospects of developer Paul Guillaro’s mixed-use development at the site of the defunct Julia L. Butterfield Hospital.

What undid the deal was the Tax Watch investigation, which revealed the details of the Ailes charitable donation agreement — that Putnam County didn’t want the public to see before Tuesday night’s vote, when the agreement was teed up, at long last, for final approval before the all-Republican County Legislature.

There was also the growing public outcry from Putnam residents who didn’t want Roger Ailes' name on their senior center. They had two reasons. First, there were the allegations of sexual harassment in former Fox host Gretchen Carlson’s civil lawsuit, and subsequent allegations from several former Fox employees about Ailes’ sexual advances.

“This project has never passed the smell test,” said Cold Spring resident Kathleen Foley, who spearheaded a petition campaign by Putnam County Taxpayers for Transparency and Integrity. “He’s a bully and morally bankrupt sexual predator.”

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County Legislator Dini Lobue,R-Mahopac, objected to the county paying $30,000 a year in property taxes on the rented Roger Ailes Senior Center.(Photo: David McKay Wilson/The Journal News)

The opposition was also motivated by the relentless attacks in The Putnam County News & Recorder newspaper on Philipstown residents who've had the temerity to raise their voices on issues of public concern in their community along the Hudson River. Elizabeth Ailes is the publisher of the weekly paper. Residents who attended Tuesday night's County Legislature meeting said they've been harassed, humiliated and threatened with lawsuits for speaking up in their hometown.

Philipstown Deputy Supervisor Nancy Montgomery recalled that her last conversation with her husband, Jim Lovell, who was killed in the 2013 Metro-North train derailment in the Bronx, was over the newspaper's disparagement of her over the senior center.

“I too was a target and victim of the bullying,” she said. “You stand here as a legislative body, as aiders and abettors to the bullying.”

The Ailes charitable donation agreement, which The Journal News/lohud.com published Tuesday morning, revealed serious problems in the way Ailes and Putnam County had structured the deal.

Ailes insisted upon retaining control over his donation. The facility would be called the Roger Ailes Senior Center. His nonprofit would serve as the project’s general contractor, and select its own construction manager and contractors, without having to go out to public bid. It did not require Ailes to comply with New York’s Wicks Law for public construction projects, which requires separate contracts for general contracting, electrical, plumbing and heating contractors.

Ailes would deliver his finished senior center, “as is,” with no obligation to pay subcontractors who might dispute what they were paid.

In addition, Ailes insisted that the vast, 6,000-square-foot interior only be used by senior citizens, even if the county government wanted to let younger residents meet or play there.

County Executive Odell, who has not returned calls seeking comment on the Ailes donation for several months, did not return a phone message Wednesday.

Another surprise for legislators in Tuesday morning’s Tax Watch investigation: The project’s cost had almost doubled to $1.5 million in the year since Ailes and his wife, joined by a Who's Who of Putnam County Republicans, gathered under a tent on a hot July morning to break ground on the Butterfield development. That's where the Roger Ailes Senior Center would stand next to Pataki Park, in honor of Ailes' Garrison neighbor, former Gov. George Pataki.

The architectural renderings that day splashed Ailes’ name on the façade of one of Guillaro’s spiffy new buildings. I pointed out at the time that calling it the Roger Ailes Senior Center violated Putnam County law, which prohibited the naming of a facility until the honoree was five years in the grave. The county legislature later changed its law to accommodate Ailes’ demand that the facility be named for him.

Plans for the Ailes Senior Center changed last year after Guillaro got a better offer from New York-Presbyterian, which wanted to move its medical office from Butterfield’s aging Lahey Pavillion, a squat, one-story brick building, into his spiffy new space. Putnam County acquiesced to move the senior center to Lahey, where it planned to have offices, a commercial kitchen, dining area, recreation space, and five bathrooms.

It would be quite a facility for the 20 Philipstown seniors who come daily for lunch at the American Legion hall in Cold Spring.

The move to Lahey proved costly. In addition to investing $1.5 million to renovate the space, Putnam County taxpayers would be paying $163,000 in rent and property taxes in the first year, with built-in increases for the ensuing 14 years.

After 15 years, Putnam County would have spent as estimated $4.3 million on the renovations and rent payments to Guillaro, including an estimated $500,000 in property taxes, said Cold Spring resident Matt Francisco, who chairs the village Planning Board.

“You are putting taxpayers at risk,” said Margaret Yonco-Haines, of Garrison.

Odell’s financial plan for the $1.5 million Roger Ailes Senior Center had three funding sources: $500,000 each from Ailes, a county loan, and the state Dormitory Authority, which would help out through its reformed member-item program.

State Sen. Sue Serino, R-Hyde Park, had submitted Odell’s application to the state Senate Finance staff, which after a preliminary review, had sent it along with its blessing to the Dormitory Authority. The application for $250,000 mentioned neither Ailes’ role as the project’s general contractor, nor the donation agreement's neglect to require public bidding.

Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, D-Ossining, told me last week that she was prepared to send Odell’s request, seeking an additional $250,000, to the Assembly leadership.

But after reading the Tax Watch column, she changed her tune. She told the Legislature on Tuesday night that the county shouldn’t count on the state money under the Ailes plan.

“I’m concerned now, the more we learn about the contract,” Galef said Tuesday. “I’m not sure what the Dormitory Authority will say or do.”

The project’s denouement came swiftly. The Legislature tabled the lease and charitable donor agreement on Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning, Roger and Elizabeth Ailes announced on the Putnam County News & Recorder website that they’d withdrawn their donation. They had another nonprofit in mind on which to bestow their beneficence.

“The family said they hoped to help the senior citizens of Philipstown but is clear for political reasons their funding is not welcome,” said the article. “Therefore they are withdrawing the money, cancelling the contribution agreement and assigning the money to another one of their charities who can put it to use immediately."

The Ailes departure gives Putnam a new opportunity to improve its program for Philipstown seniors. Now liberated from the strictures of the Ailes donation, it’s time for Putnam to look beyond Guillaro’s project for a more taxpayer-friendly alternative.

Putnam could name it for Julia L. Butterfield, the early 20th-century Cold Spring philanthropist whose bequest built the village’s library, which stands today on Morris Avenue. Another bequest built the Julia L. Butterfield Hospital, which was torn down so Guillaro’s project could go up.